


ghosts

by icoulddothisallday



Series: the blinding potency of things [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Cold War, Flashbacks, German Jew Bucky Barnes, Historical Accuracy, Holocaust, Holocaust Survivor Bucky Barnes, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Propaganda, Recovery, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers is still Captain America, Steve and Bucky did not grow up together, War Veteran Steve Rogers, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28617090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday
Summary: Before is for the ghosts, Bucky had said. Now is for the living. And the future? That future that Bucky and Hanna dared to dream about?For dreamers, Steve decides, blinking his eyes open. For the people who can look past the dire, diseased state of the world, and think, maybe.On March 10th, 1946 Steve Rogers celebrates a birthday and gets lost in the murky remnants of war.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, pre-slash - Relationship
Series: the blinding potency of things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/797628
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61





	ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Three year later, and here is what is hopefully the first of a few sequels to _swallows still sing _, i.e. the AU where Bucky was a German Jew and Steve Rogers the soldier who rescued him. I'm sorry this took so long to get to all of you, and you are still here and willing to read, thank you! Swallows Still Sing was part of the way I processed political trauma in the US, and until quite recently I found myself completely unable to write any sort of recovery arc. How does a person, let alone a nation, recover from fascism? But, you know, given the state of the world today -- well. Let's just say I channeled all of my feelings into this fic.__
> 
>  _This story, like it's predecessor, is dark, but ultimately hopeful. Please heed the tags and read with care._  
>  _italics indicate German_  
>  **bold indicates Yiddish**
> 
> _Historical commentary and Jewish cultural notes at the end. Quick reminder that in this fic Bucky is named "Joshua Buchlowitz" for cultural and historical accuracy reasons, but he still goes by Bucky._   
> 

###  _March 10th, 1946_

Steve takes the steps two at a time, brown paper package tucked under his elbow. He can already smell Hanna’s _cholent_ drifting down the stairs and he feels his shoulders settling a little. Stopping outside the door to the Buchlowitzes’ tenement, Steve lifts careful fingers to touch the _mezuzah_ that Hanna, Bucky’s mother, and Bucky hung with such pride and hope. It’s a simple thing, just a wooden box with a Hebrew letter scorched into the grain of the wood, but Steve knows what it means to them to be able to hang it without fear. 

Tapping his fist against the thin wood door, Steve steps back and considers the crowded landing of the tenement apartment. Like the many tenements of his own youth, the building is dirty and in need of repairs. Men linger on street corners and duck down alleys with ill intent, gun shots ring in the night. Alone in his Manhattan high rise, Steve worries about the Buchlowitzes. But they’re survivors, this Steve knows and has seen. The world has tried to extinguish them again and again, and each time they kindle their strength and forge ever on. 

Midway down Herkimer, the Buchlowitzes tenement is always bustling and lively — languages tumble into an incoherent exclamation of life and the colors and smells and textures of a hundred different cultures weave into a fabric that is tantalizing familiar to Steve. 

He misses the _life_ in every aspect of Brooklyn up in his sterile Manhattan apartment. He always feels more at home here, in the familiar jumble and ruckus of Brooklyn, than he ever does there. 

Miri opens the door, wearing a purple dress that Steve bought her for her birthday, with Peggy’s advice. Bucky has told Steve that it’s no surprise to him, how well Miri has adjusted to life in New York. Her accent, an odd thing that oscillates between German and British, is the only thing that separates her from a native New Yorker. And in a place like Brooklyn, it’s not like there’s all that many “native” speakers anyway. 

Smiling, Steve leans down to kiss her cheek. She grins, highlighting the dimple she has in her chin, a trait she shares with her brother. “Hello, Miri. How are you?”

“I’m good,” Miri responds. Stepping aside on bare feet, Miri beckons him in. 

_“Is that Steven?_ ” Hanna calls from the kitchen. Despite only having lived there for a month, the Buchlowitzes have already made their little tenement homey and welcoming. Steve always feels like he can breathe a little easier when he walks through the door. A patchwork of worn rugs cover the floors and makeshift curtains hang in front of the windows. Despite a steady stipend from the SSR, the Buchlowitzes live frugally — too used to tightening their belts and making do, Steve thinks. He’s the same. Steve and Bucky had spent one afternoon making bookshelves out of discarded wood and bricks, and the shelves are starting to fill with books and _tchotchkes_. The framed photo of the Buchlowitzes that Steve had paid for as their housewarming gift is sitting in a place of pride, in a smart little frame. 

“Steve!” Bucky’s familiar, accented voice from the doorway to the kitchen. He’s framed by the late afternoon sunlight that pours through the tenement windows. The Buchlowitzes were lucky to get a front tenement that overlooks a corner store, rather than being pressed up against another building. It means that each afternoon the warm glow of the sun lights up the apartment, soaking into the bones of people who lived too long in the dark. 

Bucky wraps his arms around Steve in a quick, tight hug. For the too brief moment that they’re pressed together, Steve ducks his head and breathes him in. 

Steve can still remember the smell of Dachau, death and disease and human filth. Sometimes it’s all he can smell, no matter where he is. But it’s less here, less when he can smell the castile soap Bucky uses to wash and the oil Hanna rubs into his arm to soften his scars. 

“ _Mit mazl geyert zikh_ , Bucky.” Steve pronounces the words carefully, having practiced them all week. Bucky’s face lights up, beaming. 

“Thank you, Steve.” 

Steve grins, a little sheepish, and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. When he’d gone down to the Lower East side to the kosher deli he likes there, he’d asked the woman at the counter for the right words. She’d smiled too. 

There’s the patter of bare feet running down the narrow hallway and Steve turns just in time to catch Sara in a hug. Adjusting the carefully wrapped package under his left arm, Steve lifts Sara gently, which never fails to make her giggle. Setting her down, he leans over to press a kiss to her cheek. 

“Agent Sousa says Miri and I can start school next week!” Sara shares, excitement bubbling over in her voice. 

Steve smiles to hear the news, knowing how important it is to all of the Buchlowitzes that the girls get to finish high school. “That’s great news, Sara.” 

Steve never finished high school, but the SSR is forcing him through a series of grueling tutoring sessions with the promise of a final exam that will give him the equivalent of a diploma. Steve’s never been very good with book learning and he has strange missing gaps in his knowledge, from days and weeks of school missed. Steve always comes out of those sessions feeling like his brain’s been tied into knots. 

Sara grins, wide and bright, and it’s Bucky’s smile in the dark night and Bucky’s smile as Steve opened his eyes, surprised to find himself alive. 

“Is this for Bucky?” Sara asks, pointing to the package. Steve nods, moving it into his hands. 

“Steve! You shouldn’t have.” Bucky glares at him, a playful quirk to his eyebrows that Steve is growing more and more familiar with. 

Steve thinks of the years Bucky spent in the dark, not knowing what day it was or if he’d live to see the next. No one gave him gifts, then, no one smiled or wished him a happy birthday. If Steve thought Bucky and his family would have accepted it, he’d have brought Bucky many more presents. 

“I’ll put it with the others!” Sara says, excitedly. Unlike the rest of their family, Sara and Miri do not struggle to accept gifts, but meet them with the same excitement any child their age might. 

Not the children who Steve didn’t save, though. Not the sons and daughters who never went home to their families, who never had a final embrace or murmured reassurance. Steve ducks his chin and forces the dark thought out of his head, for it has no place here where the Buchlowitzes are making their peace. 

“Come say hello to Mama,” Bucky says, hand wrapping around Steve’s wrist and giving a gentle tug. For a moment, Bucky’s hand is pale and dirty, skeletal. Steve blinks and Bucky’s hand is strong and capable again. 

Steve follows him willingly, into the warm and fragrant kitchen. The kitchen is the center of the Buchlowitzes home. Two weeks after the Buchlowitzes had moved into their new apartment, when Steve had returned from an exhausting trip to London, Rivka and he had spent the whole afternoon painting one of the walls a cheery yellow. The small kitchen table is pressed up against it, a shelf above it carrying the Buchlowitzes small treasures - a _hanukkiyah_ and set of _shabbas_ candlesticks purchased upon arrival in New York, the _yamaka_ made for Bucky in Mullion, and, in the center, a roughly whittled animal that Bucky’s father had given Sara before she left on the _kindertransport_. 

“Steven!” Hanna always acts so pleased to see him, filling his name with love and gratitude and every time Steve’s eyes burn and his throat aches and he doesn’t think about his ma. Hanna’s a small woman, but she, like her son, radiates a fierce vitality that seems to consume all the space in the room. Steve feels small again in her presence, feels himself again in her presence. Leaning down, Steve lets Hanna kiss his cheeks. She speaks softly in Yiddish, too quick and quiet for Steve to attempt to translate. 

He understands anyway. 

“ _Where is Rivka_?” Bucky’s face pulls into a frown at Steve’s question. Hanna’s hands flutter nervously over her apron. Worry creeps up Steve’s spine. Rivka has had the hardest time adjusting, he knows, is filled with an anger that is terrifying and familiar. 

He opens his mouth to ask more but Bucky’s lips press together and he shakes his head, glancing over at Sara and Miri through the open door of the kitchen. They’re both leaning over the small pile of packages on the armchair in the living room, grinning. 

“ _She’ll be back before dark,”_ Hanna says, voice unsure. Steve glances out the window, where the sun is already low in the sky. Slowly, he nods. 

_“Is there anything I can help you with, Hanna?_ ” Steve asks instead. 

She smiles and reaches up to pat his cheek. Steve’s eyes close for a moment, relishing the simple touch. “ _No, boychik. You two leave an old woman to this.”_

 _“You’re not old, mama,”_ Bucky protests, leaning in to kiss his mama’s cheek.

 ** _“Ach! Meshugas!”_** Hanna’s voice is layered with fondness and she and Bucky look at each other with a wonder that never seems to fade, as though always surprised to find themselves still together. Steve presses his lips together, watching them. 

Steve’s ma died when he was just eighteen. For years, he turned expecting her to be there, just out of sight. Hanna and Bucky turn expecting to see emptiness, always surprised by their togetherness. 

Hanna shoos them out of her kitchen with a towel. Pausing outside the door, Steve lets himself really look at Bucky. Health has returned to Bucky slowly, creeping back into his features gradually, so that for those closest to him, it is difficult to see. 

The deep valleys of his face have softened as he’s gained weight, the skeletal quality to his limbs fading. He’s still too thin for his height, but he passes as slim now, and people have stopped staring at him or crossing the road when they see him. Those reactions always made Steve’s hands curls into fists. How can they not see the blinding good in all parts of Bucky? 

“ _You look well,”_ Steve murmurs, words twisting into the air. There’s so much more that Steve wants to say, but he’s not good with words the way Bucky is. Bucky’s words are always perfect — sometimes his letters took Steve’s breath away. 

_“You also,”_ Bucky replies, stepping into the living room. His hair is starting to grow out — it’s long enough that he can carefully part and comb it back with pomade, as it is now. It makes him look years younger. _“How was your trip?”_

Steve grimaces, turning his gaze to the ground. Sitting in that room, filled to the brim with people, trying to understand the convoluted words of Churchill, had been a nightmare. Steve’s never had a mind for the complicated intricacies of politics — he likes things to be straight forward. He likes the sort of politics that requires a picket line and a shouted slogan, not the kind of politics that requires fancy words for millions dead and a land soaked in blood. 

Never had Steve imagined standing alongside politicians, smiling and nodding and posing for pictures. The USO tour had given him enough of that for a lifetime. But it had been necessary, to gain a new life in America for the Buchlowitzes and the Pragers. The deal Steve had struck meant a return to the work he found abhorrent, but he couldn’t deny that for people in America, he represents everything the war was supposed to be about. 

He’s expected at speeches and meetings. Interviews come with a strict script. No one has ever said that if he fails to toe the line the Buchlowitzes and the Pragers will have their lives ripped out from under them, but Steve knows the score. 

Still, it doesn’t stop the yearning to return to his old life. He wants to be small and stubborn and unseen, doing what needs to be done. The stifling dress uniform that he has to tuck himself into feels like trying to climb into somebody else’s skin. Having to wear it in front of people, parade out so the war can be seen as something grand and decorated always leaves Steve feeling queasy. 

_What did you think of the speech, Captain Rogers?_ journalists ask, pens posed over notebooks, _Do you agree with Prime Minister Churchill that there’s an “iron curtain” over Europe? What about his suggestions that the UNO have an armed force?_

People expect him to know those things now, things he has no way of knowing. His work was like every other soldier’s work — in the trenches, shells and blood raining down on you, walking through the worst kinds of human waste. What does he know of Iron Curtains and the UNO?

Steve tucks his hands into his pockets. Even the clothes he wears now feel like a sort of disguise, much too nice for a grunt like him. 

“Steve?” Bucky repeats softly, eyebrows folding down over blue eyes.

“Fine,” Steve manages, voice rough. “It was fine.” 

Bucky frowns at him, thoughtful and quiet, before nodding hesitantly. “We’re supposed to go fetch Ephraim and Lieb now that you’re here,” Bucky explains, turning towards the front door. 

Steve’s still wearing his coat, the same one he’d worn all those months in the war. It’s the only thing that feels comfortable these days. But they stop at the door so Bucky can pull on his own coat, a worn down thing that isn’t nearly warm enough. Steve thinks of his gift and smiles a little, knowing that Bucky will like it. Bucky’s a little awkward with the coat, but Steve doesn’t offer to help, knowing that Bucky is capable, even if it takes him a little longer than most. 

They both wrap their coats a little tighter around themselves as they head down the rickety stairs. The first burst of sharp March air, still cold with the last remnants of winter, makes Steve’s head go perfectly quiet before blood roars in his ears, turning into the failing engine of the Valkyrie, air flowing through the cracked window, ice and water rapidly approaching. 

It’s like this every time he steps outside and Steve moves through it, coming back to himself halfway down the block. Bucky is shivering and his eyes are distant. Steve wishes he could wrap an arm around him, pull him close like those nights on the front. But what was quiet comfort in the dark of the forests of France and Germany is something altogether different here and Steve is aware of all the people crowding the bustling streets, the ways eyes pick Steve out even when he thinks no one sees him. 

Ephraim and Lieb live a few streets over, across Fulton on Somers, where they’d been able to find a ground level apartment. Ephraim hasn’t been gaining strength the way Bucky has, Steve knows. Each week he gets a report on all three of the men’s progress, written in dry facts with no regard for the actual people involved. It always makes Steve’s skin itch, because it’s not any of his business and these men are so much more than what’s been done to them, but he understands why their progress has to be monitored. While Bucky makes steady gains in both strength and mental acuity, Ephraim seems to have stalled after some initial gains. Every few weeks he makes an unexpected leap forward, but there’s no consensus on whether that’s due to the serum or because of Ephraim’s inborn persistence and hard work. 

Steve’s shoulders coil into a tense line as they walk. In some ways, Brownsville is better than other parts of New York. Fewer people recognize him, too caught up in the struggles of their own lives and reading newspapers in Yiddish and Russian and Polish, no time for some man who calls himself Captain America. But Brownsville is loud and chaotic, hundreds of voices tangling together. Trolleys clack along tracks. Languages mingle with the sounds of manual labor, a mechanical slurry of noise that drives a pick into the base of his skull, starting a blinding headache. Across the street, a man yells out in German. Steve knows the language, recognizes the words, even as his hand drops for his gun and reaches for his shield. 

Disgusted with himself, Steve hunches down in his coat. 

“Miri and Sara are excited about starting school,” Bucky shares, just loud enough for Steve’s enhanced hearing to pick up. 

Once they’d been safely back in the United States, Steve had revealed to Ephraim and Bucky that he had also received the serum. He had apologized, for if Erskine had not succeeded with him, perhaps Zola would never have tried so hard to perfect it. They’d waved his apologies away. _Only Zola is responsible for his cruelty,_ Ephraim said. _Only his hands hurt us._

Every night Steve scrubs his hands and every night he can still smell the blood. 

They haven’t spoken of the revelation since then. Though Steve’s fame swept the nation, the cause of his extraordinary strength had been carefully kept under wraps. Bucky and Ephraim are under strict orders not to speak of it, not even with each other, for fear they’d attract the wrong kind of attention. 

“I’m glad,” Steve murmurs to Bucky. “They deserve it.” 

Bucky nods, smiling. “Agent Sousa says it’s an excellent school, that they’ll receive the very best education there.”

“The Girls’ High School, right?” Steve confirms. Agent Sousa is the SSR agent in charge of the Buchlowitzes and Pragers day-to-day needs in the United States. He’s a kind man who never fails to go above and beyond for both families, even though his position gets him slack from the other male agents. 

Steve sighs, missing Peggy. She’s soon to take over the New York branch of the SSR, after her role in Eastern Europe is officially handed over to Monty. Steve thinks that she’ll be wonderful there, spinning a fine, delicate web of change the way Steve could never manage. 

“Yes,” Bucky says, bringing Steve back to the moment. “Do you know it?” 

Nodding, Steve says, “I’ve heard of it. It’s one of the best.”

Bucky perks up, grinning up at the sky in that way he has that makes it seem like he’s blessing the whole world. “Good!” 

“And we’re going to find a tutor for you and Rivka,” Steve continues, watching Bucky out of the corner of his eye. “So that you can both finish high school.”

Tilting his chin back, Bucky laughs. “ _God is good_!” he announces, voice vibrant and ringing. Steve wonders at him, this man who effuses positivity and gratitude, who finds things to smile at in every moment of every day, despite the world’s very best efforts to smother him in darkness. 

In the bright spring light, even blocked by the row houses that line the street, Bucky shines. The sun momentarily blinds Steve to the scars and sharp edges of Bucky, the places where hurt still dwells. Steve knows that those dark spots still exist in Bucky, though Bucky never lets on that he still hurts. But Steve has the letters and Bucky’s words and he knows how diligent Bucky is at packing it all away, letting only the good dwell in the moment. 

Steve wishes he had that skill. Instead, the reverse seems to be true. Steve can’t help but let poison seep into every second of his day, bleeding over good people and safe places. 

“ _I like it here,”_ Bucky says suddenly, slipping into German. The Buchlowitzes all drift in and out of languages, a multilingual melody that Steve wishes he could take back to his quiet apartment. _“It reminds me of home, only people are freer, they don’t need to hide away.”_

Brownsville is riddled with crime. Death slinks through its streets, builds like a pile of garbage on a street corner. But groceries carry Yiddish signs, _challot_ are sold on Friday, kosher delis are a dime a dozen, and Steve can see why that would feel more important to Bucky. In his life, malintent can be assumed, good is to be celebrated. 

“ _Soon I’ll take you to the Lower East Side,_ ” Steve promises. His apartment isn’t far from there, nestled in Greenwich village, which Steve is pretty sure is Howard’s idea of a joke. It’s tantalizingly close to the places that ring with familiarity, the sort of community that Steve hasn’t let himself have in years. 

Howard’s wise to those sorts of things, even if he’s not of that bent himself. He’d figured Steve out without much trouble, which always sent a sort of thrilling fear through Steve. 

Steve hasn’t had the bravery to wander into the scene since returning from the war. He’s so recognizable now, if someone saw him…

“ _Where is your mind today, Steve?”_ Bucky asks, words lilting in a secret laugh. His hand brushes over the back of Steve’s, waking Steve from his thoughts once more and making him start, hands curling into defensive fists. Bucky’s eyes turn worried, a stormy blue like the Atlantic they’d crossed together. 

_“I’m sorry,”_ Steve apologizes, shaking his head as though to clear it of cobwebs. Steve’s thoughts always seem to wander these days, never staying on one subject for long, drifting along disused paths and winding into tangled knots. 

Bucky’s hand still rests on Steve’s fist, a gentle counterpart to the brutal violence that dwells in Steve’s blood. He shouldn’t be here with Bucky, polluting the peace he’s built for himself. But Steve is a selfish man and he could no more draw himself away from the Buchlowitzes than he could put out the sun. 

“ _I’m sorry,”_ Steve repeats, eyes on Bucky’s pale fingers. He doesn’t lift his head to look at Bucky, doesn’t let himself find out if a frown is drawing lines on Bucky’s face. Releasing his fists, Steve slips his hands into his pockets, pulling away from the warmth that is Bucky’s skin on his. 

They’re paused in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing people to step around them. Voices curse them and fists shake their way and Steve longs for the sturdy strength of his shield. He wishes that he could hunker behind it always, that it would defend him from everything that is wrong with the world now, the way it once had from bullets and bombs. 

But most of the things that are wrong with the world now come from inside him and cannot be deflected. 

Bucky places his hand on Steve’s arm. “ _Are you well, Steve?”_

 _“Yes,_ ” Steve says, forcing himself to stand up straight and smile. _“Yes, just tired. Let’s go. Ephraim and Lieb will be wondering where we are.”_

Bucky’s still frowning when Steve turns away. 

*

While the Pragers are more than capable of navigating the busy Brooklyn roads on their own, the three steep sets of stairs to the Buchlowitzes apartment are not achievable without several sets of helping hands. Ephraim gets around with crutches and a loping hop he calls “good enough,” but stairs are his undoing. 

Ephraim is still sharp and bony where his body presses into Steve’s as they slowly make their way up towards the Buchlowitzes apartment. Lieb has already disappeared inside with Miri and Sara, turning into a child again with the release of responsibility that Steve and Bucky’s presence allows. 

“ _Lieb’s to start at school soon,”_ Ephraim tells them proudly, between whistling breaths. The last, desperate fight with typhus had left a lasting mark on Ephraim that even the serum seems unable to erase. Still, Ephraim has improved since coming to America. His color is better, he carries more weight on his tall frame. Like Bucky, dark circles ring his eyes, but Steve knows the cause of that has nothing to do with either of the men’s physical health. 

“ _Sara and Miri too,_ ” Bucky shares with a grin. He’s walking up the steps backwards as Steve helps Ephraim. _“They’re to begin next Monday.”_

A flash of grief crosses Ephraim’s face, so fast Steve almost misses it. Ephraim had a son Sara’s age, a boy named Mendel. He never returned from the camps. The SSR still looks, but they all know that his body lies somewhere in an unmarked mass grave or has been reduced to ash. 

_“Lieb is receiving private tutelage,”_ Ephraim explains, as though the stab of remembrance never happened. “ _He lost so many years in the camp.”_

Bucky’s shoulders hunch, shadows creeping into his eyes momentarily. Steve lowers his gaze to the floor and lifts Ephraim another step as the man leans into his remaining leg, bracing himself on the railing. “ _Rivka and I are also going to see a tutor. So we may finish secondary school.”_

Grinning, Ephraim announces, “ _Mazel tov! I’m sure you will both flourish.”_

Bucky smiles, a fragile thing, like a baby bird in cupped palms. _“We shall see.”_

For a moment, Steve thinks of admitting his own struggles with the tutelage offered by the SSR. But compared to Bucky, Rivka, and Lieb, Steve’s reasons for never finishing high school seem trivial, his own struggles to catch up feel unsubstantial. 

As they reach the final landing, Steve gently lets weight back into Ephraim’s body. Bucky hands back one of his crutches and Ephraim situates himself, settling hands on the wooden frames and beginning to move forward. Steve opens and holds the door for both men, letting them pass by him. A sense-memory threatens, and Steve shoves it away determinedly. 

Rivka has returned home and is perched on the couch beside Miri. Lieb has stretched his long legs out on the floor, leaning against the wall. Steve watches Bucky go still when he notices Rivka, and abruptly Steve recalls the worried expressions and tight muscles of Hanna and Bucky when Steve had asked after Rivka earlier. Of all of them, Rivka is having the hardest time adjusting, Steve knows, though he’s not close with her. Rivka is a difficult woman to know, often closed off to the world. 

She’s smiling now, dark curls falling across her face, making her seem young and at ease in her skin. She also carries dark circles under her eyes, hollowed out places on her body. It is a marker of the war that these people have fought, the tremendous sorrow they have faced and are attempting to overcome. 

“Steve?” Steve twitches, surprised, and his hand leaps for his gun. He forces himself to relax. _There’s nothing wrong. Everything is fine._ Slowly, he turns to Hanna, making himself smile. She smiles back and hands him a glass of wine. Steve knows she must have splurged for the occasion and he takes the glass ever so carefully, not letting his brutish hands squeeze too tight or act too quickly. “ _Would you make a toast?_ ”

Steve blinks at her, lets his gaze travel around the room. Sometime during Steve’s brooding, everyone has gathered in the living room. They’re squeezed onto the couch, pressing into each other. There is warmth and happiness in their eyes. Steve feels cold down to the core, as he has since waking after the Valkyrie. He thinks he froze all the way down inside, he thinks he left something of his humanity in the wreckage of the crash. 

Today is for Bucky, his first birthday in the light in many years. Bucky, who sits surrounded by those he loves, those people who somehow managed to survive the darkest night. Here are the strongest people Steve has ever known, and he is so weak beside them. They are here and they are living, which is more than anyone could have ever expected. 

And Hanna is asking him to say words for the most incredible man Steve has ever known. 

“I’m not so good with words,” Steve starts, voice hoarse as though he hasn’t spoken in a long time. He clears his throat, “Not like Bucky.” Bucky smiles the fragile bird smile and Steve’s heart twists into his throat. What did he ever do to be included among these people? “But here’s to Bucky, for the birthdays missed and the many more still to come.” 

Steve lifts his glass, meeting Bucky’s eyes. He tries to smile. “May your days be filled with the peace and happiness you deserve.”

“ _L’chaim!”_ Ephraim adds cheerfully, and it’s echoed across the room. Bucky smiles at him and the world seems quiet, just for a moment. 

*

The celebrations are joyous and busy. Various neighbors stop in to offer their congratulations to Bucky, as the Buchlowitzes are already well liked in their building. Bucky is outgoing and cheerful, never seems to leave the apartment without making a new acquaintance. People may not know what he and his family have survived, but Bucky is one of the most engaging and wonderful men Steve has ever met. He understands the draw. 

Steve does his best to stay out of the way, tucking himself into the corner and sipping slowly at the glass of wine. He’s always been more of a cheap liquor kind of man, himself, but he’s learning to, at the very least, tolerate the taste of wine. 

Halfway through the party, when the food has been demolished, Rivka pulls out her fiddle — another gift from Steve, one that had been a battle to get any of the Buchlowitzes to accept — and Ephraim produces a flute, and the night descends into music and dancing. It’s a swirling rush of color and smiling faces, skirts flipping around legs and scarves twirling in the air. Bucky’s in the center of it all, beaming from ear to ear. Steve had no idea Bucky could dance, but he most certainly can. Steve should take him out sometime, he thinks, to one of the dance halls. He could learn the Lindy or swing, maybe find a sweetheart. 

Bucky deserves a sweetheart. He deserves something happy and uncomplicated. A nice Jewish girl, Steve thinks, someone he can bring home to his mama and his sisters. Someone to make a life with. 

Steve rubs a hand roughly over his face, setting down his empty wine glass. 

He sees Hanna approaching this time and he takes a bracing breath and smiles as she approaches. She’s carrying a heaping plate of her _cholent._ She offers it to him with a smile. “ _Come sit with us, Steve. Eat.”_

She tucks her small, strong hand into his elbow and gives him a tug. He follows her through the people and she hustles him into a seat on the couch. Handing him the plate, she gives him a firm look. “ _Eat,”_ she orders and Steve smiles. The food warms him, deep inside, but can’t reach the pit, deep within. 

Some days it is hard to wake in the morning. It’s hard to pull himself out of bed, to go through the motions of putting on clothes, of brushing his teeth, of facing his reflection in the mirror. It is harder still to walk out the door into a city both foreign and familiar, to face people he no longer recognizes. 

Steve startles out of his thoughts as Bucky comes tumbling towards him. Bucky’s smiling, cheeks flushed with exercise, eye bright. Overlaid, Steve sees the skeletal frame, the gaunt eyes, the scars and filth. He presses his eyes closed. 

He sees another body. Smaller. Skin and bone. Eyes staring blankly. 

He rips his eyes open. 

Bucky’s smile has faded. _“Steve?”_

Standing, Steve sets his bowl down. _“I should go,”_ he murmurs, voice distant even to his own ears. 

Bucky frowns, dark brows folding into worried lines over his bright eyes. He glances back, over his shoulder, at the swirling skirts and dancing feet of his family and friends. Even Ephraim is dancing now, laughing and leaning on a crutch. 

“Come,” Bucky says firmly, in English. He grabs Steve’s elbow and tugs him deeper into the apartment. Steve could resist, if he wanted to. But he thinks he’d go anywhere Bucky wanted him to. 

Swallowing against a sudden lump in his throat, Steve slips through a door a step behind Bucky. Bucky’s room is small and windowless, and Steve knows he doesn’t spend much time there. It’s only a two bedroom place, and Bucky and his ma had fought long and hard about who would take the small second bedroom and who would take the couch — Rivka, Miri and Sara all share the larger room, and that was never a question. 

The room is sparsely furnished, with only a metal-frame bed, a chair, and some stacked boxes serving as a dresser to fill up the space. Bucky gently tugs Steve to sit beside him on the bed. The chair is filled with a tidy stack of papers — Steve’s throat goes tight, recognizing them almost immediately. They’re the letters he wrote to Bucky, in those long final months of the war. He keeps Bucky’s letters by his bedside as well. 

Steve starts at a sudden touch to his knee, nearly jumping out of his skin. It’s only Bucky, of course. He takes a shivering, shaking breath to settle himself and turns to meet Bucky’s gaze. His eyes are gentle and kind, and Steve thinks of quiet nights by a dwindling fire. 

He remembers when those eyes held only fear and looked huge in Bucky’s gaunt face. His hands itch to reach up and touch, to confirm that what he perceives now is the truth. 

_“Steve? You seem far away today. Where is your mind, hm?”_ A gentle touch to his temple has Steve closing his eyes abruptly against the wash of emotion. 

_“Do you ever get lost in the before?_ ” Steve asks. He hates how his voice trembles, how the German words feel foreign and violent on his tongue, even though he uses this language mostly to speak to Bucky and his family, these days. 

Pursing his lips, Bucky considers. _“Sometimes, in my dreams. But then I think — well, before is for ghosts._ ” Bucky offers a sad smile that shadows his eyes, turning them a deeper shade of grey in the dim light of his bedroom. _“Now is for the living.”_

 _“Maybe I am a ghost,_ ” Steve says before he can think better of it. 

Bucky puts a hand on Steve’s, wraps those long, slim fingers around his wrist, pressing to Steve’s pulse point. A sense-memory shivers in the background. Steve had done this — for Bucky, for others, checking, hoping, praying. 

Bucky had lived. Bucky’s pulse had beat strong under his finger tips every time Steve had checked. 

“ _No, Steve. You are not a ghost. You are here, and you are alive.”_

Steve doesn’t feel alive, some days. He feels cold, down to his core. He thinks about taking the plane down, thinks about giving up everything so that others can live. For some reason, he’s still here. He can’t understand why. 

Once, Steve stumbled across a soldier hit by a stick grenade. There was nothing below his knees, he was bleeding out, blood watering the ground, sewing some awful crop that Steve hopes he never discovers. He spoke in mumbles, drifting. _It’s so cold. Will you bring me my bedroll? I’m so cold._ It wasn’t until after he’d died that Steve realized he was speaking German. 

_“Am I?”_

_“Steve,_ ” Bucky rebukes, voice tight. Steve can’t quite meet his worried eyes. He can’t be here. He’s ruining Bucky’s night. He has to go. He pulls his wrist from Bucky’s hand, losing track of his own pulse as he does. He feels immaterial, like all that’s left of himself is his shadow. 

“I have to go. Bucky, I’m sorry, I have to go. I can’t — I can’t be here right now, I’m not — I don’t know how, okay? I don’t know how to be like you and your family, I don’t know how to be —” Steve shakes his head. His hair is getting too long, it needs a cut. He pushes past Bucky, feeling sick with the violence of the motion, and hurries through the tiny hallway and past the crowded living room. He loses time, loses himself, doesn’t come back til he’s halfway to Crown Heights. 

The night is cold and damp, the kind of night that used to creep into his lungs and make him sick for weeks. Steve thinks his body never learned how to recover. He’s been sick since the day he was born and the only time he ever got better was in that damn machine, with that cursed serum running through his veins. Maybe he’s just not meant for recovery. Maybe there’s no path forward for him.

Maybe he died, down there in the ice. Maybe this is all just a terrible dream. 

But his heart pounds in his chest and his breath comes quick and harsh in his lungs and he is unexplainably, unavoidably _alive_. 

Before the war, Steve used to stand in picket lines until he got dizzy and his knees gave out. Steve was sure that if he stood there long enough, raised his signs high enough, shouted loud enough, he could change the world. That somehow, he could erase the ills of the world — cure it, like his mother cured disease. 

But then, neither of them could cure Steve, and when the TB came for her, there was no curing that either. 

War is an infection, a pus-filled, gangrenous wound. But you can cut off the limb and it doesn’t matter, because the infection was already there. It was always there, it’s everywhere, it’s bred into the blood. There’s no magic penicillin for this infection, Steve thinks. No way to cut it away. 

No cure for the ills of the world now. 

Steve collapses on a curb in the shadows between streetlights. He can’t breathe. His head aches. The whole world is sick and wrong, Hitler and all the rest just the visible sign of the tumors growing underneath. 

His hands are shaking. He wishes he had a smoke. 

He closes his eyes. He sees bodies. Death. 

Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, Steve tries to rub the memories away. Stars burst behind his eyelids and he sees, instead, Bucky. Bucky, whirling through his living room, smiling and rejoicing, hugging his family. He hears Hanna’s voice, and the music of a spirited fiddle. 

The pavement is cold under his ass. His pants are damp with who-knows-what. A carriage trundles by, and somewhere a radio turns on, a soft, jazzy song that Steve almost recognizes. 

The Buchlowitzes found peace again. A wondrous, beautiful peace that they built for themselves everyday, built on the back of Bucky’s optimism and Hanna’s faith. They are stronger than most anyone knows, Steve thinks. Not because they survived, but because they are forging a new life — one that is warm and joyous, and filled with hope for the future. 

_Before is for the ghosts,_ Bucky had said. _Now is for the living_. And the future? That future that Bucky and Hanna dared to dream about? 

For dreamers, Steve decides, blinking his eyes open. For the people who can look past the dire, diseased state of the world, and think, _maybe_ . That _maybe_ future that Bucky dreams, the one that is bright and full of sunshine, is for people who dance in living rooms, and mothers who cook for strangers, for sisters who paint yellow walls, and especially for men who sit by the bedside of a friend, waiting for an improbability. 

And maybe it’s for anyone who is kind, and who loves, and who gives when they can and who picks others up. Steve thinks he used to be that kind of person. Before the war. So many things were different before the war. Maybe he can remember how. 

_The first step,_ Steve’s ma used to say, _is to stand up_ . After a fainting fit or an asthma attack, she’d hold his tiny hands and help him to his feet. _Just stand up._

Steve stands up. 

**Author's Note:**

> cholent - a traditional (Ashkenazi) Jewish stew.  
> mezuzah - a piece of parchment with holy verses, placed in a decorative box traditionally placed on the doorway of Jewish homes. A mitzva, and indicated in the old testament.  
> tchotchkes- Yiddish words for decorative odds and ends (think the sort of decorative nonsense your grandma maybe had on her shelves, or the sort of nonsense you might pick up in a gift shop for a friend)  
>  _Mit mazl geyert zikh_ \- a Yiddish birthday wish, somewhat literally "adding a year should bring good luck"  
> hannukiyah - a menorah, or 9 branched candle holder used during the Jewish holiday of Hannukah. Colloquially known as a menorah, but technically a menorah only has 8 candles. In this essay I will explain why Jewish day school has served no purpose but to put highly specific notes at the ends of fanfiction.  
> shabbas - the sabbath, or day of rest. Two candles are lit Friday night to welcome the sabbath. Shabbas is a traditionally Ashkenazi term (vs. shabbat), because Bucky's family is Ashkenazi.  
> yamaka - a traditional head covering worn by Jewish men, Yiddish term.  
> Kindertransport - organized rescue effort of primarily Jewish children prior to the outbreak of WWII. Bucky's two youngest sisters were put on the transport in this 'verse.  
> Meshugas - Yiddish word for nonsense/craziness  
> Iron Curtain - the political boundary separating Europe following WWII and throughout the cold war. The term became popular after Churchill's famous speech on March 5th, 1946.  
> Brownsville - a neighborhood of Brooklyn. In the early 20th Century, it was primarily inhabited by Eastern European immigrants, including a high percentage of Jews.  
> challot (pl) - braided bread traditionally eaten to welcome shabbas.  
> kosher - a set of dietary rules outlined in the old testament.  
> L'chaim - literally "to life," a traditional Jewish phrase for celebration. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and for coming back to this 'verse (or discovering it!) after so much time away from it. I promise Steve and Bucky are on their way to a happy ending.


End file.
